Note: This is the last of the entries in this battered computer found amidst the Mi'ihen Ruins. There's no evidence to state what happened to the author after this time except for a scratchy video sphere depicting what the transcriber assumes to be the author's death. Oddly, a man by the name of Gippal is recorded in history as the first leader of the Al Bhed Machine Faction, though his documented existence occurs after the date on the video sphere of his death.

Part Twenty

197S9.9.27

We really are heading for the Travel Agency. I told Nooj that I wanted to talk to Rin about getting us all back to Bikanel, but… well, to say he wasn't receptive is an understatement. He looked at me like I was an idiot, like he hardly recognized me. The venom in his glare was more than I've ever experienced from Nooj, not even in the moments when I could tell he just wanted to spout curses at the Maesters, and it was totally different. I can't even begin to explain.

I can't explain Lai either. After Nooj tossed my suggestion to the side, I tried to go to Lai and tell him, but he… just looked at me like he pitied me. No, that's not it. He looked at me like he was completely separate from me. I don't get it. I don't get why Lai won't even touch me, why he just lays there when we should be having sex – making love – when he should be panting and trying to stifle his moaning. He just… lays there and takes it. Like it's his duty.

What have I done wrong? I tried to save him… what's happened to Baralai?

The only one who even remains close to normal is Paine. But… I wanted to talk to her, to see if she had any ideas as to what's going on, but she went to Nooj. Yeah, I guess he needs her.

I hate feeling helpless. Tyshed, I'm never going to feel this way again. I'm going to do things, and not have to stand around while someone else does it for me.

Never again.

And now, I'm going to do something about this. It might be my last chance. I have to save Lai again… but my own way this time. And hopefully it'll work better this time.

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It worked. Well, in some ways, it worked… I gave him everything I could. It was the gentlest I've ever been with him, even back when we first started sleeping together. In the shade of the trees, hidden behind some random overgrown grasses, we lyta muja.

Yeah, finally. We, not I to him, not him to me, but we. That's the essence of the difference, you know… I guess it's not the same for all people, but at least the Al Bhed believe this way, that there's a definite difference between caq and lygehk muja, and that difference is… well no, I don't even know what the difference is, but what we did just now was lygehk muja.

Muja. Love. Yeah, that's a big deal.

I've realized just how big of a deal it is. With this one act, I got Lai to stop being a cold fish and to start being warm, to go back to being himself, if even just a little bit. He smiled for the first time in days.

I know that Nooj is going to insist that we split up… but I won't split up with Lai. I'll go with him as far as I can, I'll stay with him… we'll go to Luca. There we can blend in and hop a ship to Bikanel or wherever else we can go. I'll arrange it with Rin. We'll be just fine.

I am going to miss the other two, though. Nooj and Paine… Noojster and Dr. P… they'd better stay safe, the two of them. We may not be able to be together, but distance doesn't mean anything. Friendship, and brotherhood, goes far beyond that.

Sometime we'll all be together again.

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This is it.

We're going our different ways, and we can't let anybody know what happened and where we came from. We can't let anybody know we were in the Crimson Squad, that we're on the run from the Maesters.

I can't have this zuinhym anymore. At least, not this one. I have to destroy it.

I can't do it with my own two hands, though. There's so much here… a complete documentation of what those religious nuts did to us, what they put the Crimson Squad through, and the terrors of a reign of religion.

Hopefully someday I'll help all that be different. But for now, we have to hide until they forget about us, but I'll always be with Lai. Always. I'll help him recover from this. I'll help him get back to the real Lai, the one I fell in love with out in the desert and on that ship, before that poison in that cave got to him.

We're just about to say our goodbyes. This will be, probably, the last time I see Nooj and Paine for a while. The next time we meet, it will be for the downfall of Yevon, I know it, even though we have to work separately to get there.

I'm standing here on the edge of the Highroad… there's a river that runs underneath the bridge I'm on that leads out to the ocean. That's where you'll go, zuinhym, and someday someone will find you and you'll tell them the story of the atrocities of Yevon.

-Gippal, dra baylasygan

-- M E M O R Y C A P A C I T Y E X C E E D E D --